Shame
by giant-sequoia
Summary: Santiago inadvertently reveals something about himself he would rather have kept hidden.


"**Shame"**

_Shaundi_

Nobody on the ship had figured out yet how to reload Zin rifles. They just used them when necessary until they were used up, and then pick up new ones. There were plenty to go around, after all.

That was not good enough for Shaundi. She would figure out how the damn things worked if she had to disassemble a hundred of them and put them back together, piece by piece.

She had managed to render two of them apparently inoperable, cannibalized them for parts, and was well into her third attempt when the console next to her emitted a tinny chime.

"_Shaundi, girl. You there?_"

She reached over to hold down the appropriate key, still fiddling with the rifle with her other hand. "What is it, King?"

"_I need some help in here. Can you bring Pierce?_"

Shaundi's eyebrows shot up and she stopped fiddling. "What exactly do you need help with? I thought the boss was with you. He can handle Tanya."

There was an electronically-filtered sigh. "_Right now, I don't think he can handle _himself."

What the hell was _that_ supposed to mean? "Ben, I need more than that. What's going on?"

"_Can you just come? I need someone covering the exits while I find Tanya. The Playa absorbed her virus out of some infected simulations. Miller _said_ he'd be immune, but..._"

Oh, god. That sounded bad. Shaundi took a moment to cradle her forehead in one hand, trying hard not to imagine what she might soon be exposing herself to for the good of the human race. "Be right there, King. Pierce!"

* * *

_Santiago_

He was in the zone. The music was meaningless noise to him, but he could sense the rhythm and move with it. He was one with the beat.

"That's right... let me hear your adulation!"

They ate it up, imprisoned human minds and low-level AIs alike. His appeal was universal. How could anybody not love his moves?

Pierce and Shaundi had appeared among the crowd, guns lowered. They seemed more stunned than enraptured. Probably they had just never suspected such feline grace lurked beneath his raw sex appeal. Feeling fond of his lieutenants, Santiago shot them a special wink.

Both of them would probably be all over him after this. Maybe he'd even let them have a private show. Either way, things would never be the same.

* * *

_Pierce_

His mouth was hanging open. He couldn't seem to remember how to close it. Beside him, Shaundi was equally transfixed, though whether in fascination or horror was impossible to say.

He started, "Is that really a-"

"Yes," she said.

"How you know what I was gonna say?"

"I just know."

Pierce blinked several times, but the scene in front of him refused to go away. "Just never thought I'd see the boss in a thong, is all."

"That's not a thong," Shaundi said. "There needs to be a lot more material for it to count as a thong. No, that's a complete absence of shame."

Both of them kept staring for a while, unable to look away. Santiago noticed them and winked. Shaundi cringed; Pierce felt the inklings of a vast and dangerous hilarity beginning to seep through his shock.

He couldn't help taking in the sight. He would never dare admit it to anyone, but the boss's dancing wasn't entirely unappealing. Santiago _was_ a pretty hot dude, after all. And _big_. Pierce wondered if he should have been surprised that such a beefy guy could be so flexible. And those thighs were... huge. The flexing going on when Santiago knelt on the stage was almost enough to make Pierce jealous. Almost. Okay, he _was_ jealous.

Pierce found himself curious about the sheer muscularity of his Commander-in-Chief's legs. It hardly should have surprised him, given the man's upper body, but still. How had he never noticed this before? Come to think of it, Pierce couldn't recall a time he had ever seen his boss in anything but long pants, or some variant thereof.

"Pierce," Shaundi said softly.

"Huh?"

"Did you know about those scars on his legs?"

"Scars?" Pierce looked more closely. "Uh..."

Santiago was spinning around and slapping his own ass.

Shaundi sighed. "Wait for him to stop doing that, then look."

Not for the first time, Pierce wondered if the simplest explanation for everything that had happened recently, that he himself had gone completely batshit crazy, wasn't the truth.

When the boss was facing them again, Pierce looked. It was hard to make out through the constant gyrating, but he could see now what Shaundi was referring to: a complex series of criss-crossing helical scars that twined up and down Santiago's thighs like vines on a trellis.

Pierce frowned. What kind of injury would leave scars like that? There were so many of them. Now that he was looking, it was impossible not to see the marks. And some of them looked less like scars and more like _cuts_. Fresh ones.

As far as Pierce knew, Santiago had only ever been in one or two knife fights. Theirs was a world of guns, not blades. But combat injuries seemed an implausible explanation. These thin, spiralling lines were far too numerous, too clean, too careful and precise to be anything but... self-inflicted?

The _boss?_ Surely not. Certainly he was an oddball, and he had issues with addiction and interpersonal skills, and he claimed to be emotionally impaired, but...

Oh.

"No," Pierce said quietly. "Never knew about those."

* * *

_Santiago_

The discharge of Ben King's gun hit his mind like a shockwave. He blinked several times as the world seemed to briefly spasm around him. Something had shifted – something internal, elements of his own perception. He had become foreign to himself. Or he had, but was now back to the way he was supposed to be. He needed to know. What had just changed?

King left Tanya's body where it lay and tossed his gun to the ground. Whatever he had just been doing, it was finished. Santiago's memory caught up with his mind. Of course – Tanya.

Quickly, Santiago ran back through the rest of the past hour. A split second later he glanced down at himself and felt a shockingly intense storm of emotion gathering in his chest. Terror and shame intertwined with rage. He had betrayed _himself_.

"Kinzie?" he yelled, a rising snarl of the kind all Saints learned never to ignore.

She knew immediately what was wrong. She didn't need to speak; she simply acted. Red code condensed around him. The goofy hat, boots, insubstantial shirt, and even less substantial thong became a pair of long shorts and a purple sleeveless jersey. Not his first choice of outfits, but the first thing he'd bought in the simulation to replace what Zinyak had put him into. Better than nothing.

Unconsciously, his fists clenched at his sides. He glanced around quickly, wondering who might have seen him. Not just here, but especially earlier, at the club. He could manage not to care about the crowd of strangers, but there had been others...

Shaundi and Pierce.

For a moment, Santiago stopped breathing and he was sure his heart stopped beating.

King was still nearby. As Santiago glanced in his direction, King was turning towards him, apparently concerned.

"Playa? You alright?"

Santiago gritted his teeth and stared at his feet. He wanted to shake his head or communicate, somehow, that _no_ he was not alright. But right now was not the time for that. He needed to appear strong. He'd helped one of his lieutenants enter a state of personal satisfaction, of confidence and competence. He needed to project that same air of confidence and competence. He needed his persona.

With a brutal effort of will, he relaxed his facial expression. "Fine," he said. "Just residual effects of the virus making my brain hurt. I'll live."

King chuckled and rolled his eyes. "Oh, there were some _effects_, all right." He eyed Santiago up and down, speculatively. "You're sure they're going to be just... residual?"

"Sure," Santiago said tightly. His knuckles burned under continuous strain, and he forced himself to release his fists.

King gave him a level, appraising stare for a moments. "Okay then."

He disengaged. He walked away, or disappeared – Santiago didn't notice or care. He'd satisfied King and now he was alone. As alone as he could be, anyway, in the middle of the park in virtual Steelport. Tanya's body had already vanished, but there were still people nearby.

Were they simulations? Or trapped human minds? Santiago had reason to believe it was a mixture of both. It wasn't hard to understand how this virtual city, lorded over by imperialistic aliens and terrorized by the hot-blooded, revenge-crazy Saints, could be someone's personal hell.

He needed to get out of here. He needed the real world, cold and empty of home as it was. He needed to be alone.

He launched himself into the air and glided for the nearest gateway.

* * *

_Shaundi_

She paced in the command center, waiting for the boss to awaken from the simulation. Pierce, by contrast, stood off to one side with his arms folded, uncharacteristically sombre and silent. He was as concerned as she was. Kinzie and Matt, meanwhile, had no idea what was going on and were still working at separate consoles, occasionally trading jabs or coding suggestions.

Finally the light above Santiago's pod switched off and his eyes opened. He met Shaundi's gaze immediately. Before she could say anything, he'd shoved the restraining bars open and jumped out of his pod. He headed for a door without a word.

Pierce looked up, opening his mouth to speak, but Shaundi beat him to it, darting around Santiago to place herself in his path.

"Boss, we need to talk-"

"No," he said shortly, pushing past her and through the door to the cargo bay catwalk. He vaulted over the railing and landed, out of sight, with a metallic _thump_ on the deck below. His footsteps faded from earshot.

Shaundi scowled and turned back towards the center of the room, rubbing her forehead. The boss was never easy to talk to about his personal issues, and the last thing she wanted to do was alienate him with a well-meaning attempt at a heart-to-heart. Ha! _Alienated._ She forced an iron will down on her desire to snicker. Still, she had to do something. Say _something_. Find out what was wrong, what was causing this.

Kinzie and Matt had both twisted around in their seats to stare at her. Pierce was still silent, chewing his tongue and looking thoughtful. Shaundi forced her will down on the urge to make a snarky comment, too.

"What was that all about?" Matt asked.

"I think he's upset about what happened in the simulation," Pierce said.

"You _think_?" Shaundi bit off sarcastically.

Matt looked surprised. "Upset? But he seemed so... into it. It sounded like he was having a lot of fun."

"Maybe he was, but he _stopped_ having fun when the virus wore off," Shaundi said, glaring daggers at him.

Matt had the grace to look sheepish. "...Ah. I see."

"What actually happened?" Kinzie asked. "I was working on something else. Tanya's virus? Did they get her?"

"Yes," Shaundi said. "But not before her virus did something to him. He did a..."

"God, that was awkward," Matt muttered. A moment later he yelped as Kinzie leapt from her seat and delivered a hard smack to his shoulder.

"_Did_ something to him?!" she exclaimed. "You said he wouldn't be affected!"

"I said I _thought_ he wouldn't be affected!" Matt retorted, leaning away from her fury and rubbing his shoulder. "There was no way to be certain! Really, it doesn't even make sense. He's a living person, and it was just code."

Kinzie growled her annoyance and threw up her hands. She returned to her seat, still grumbling about dangerous code and synaptic pathways.

"'Just code', huh," Pierce said dryly. "Lucky for us, it wasn't permanent. Boss is pissed, though. And I mean he's fucking _pissed_. I ain't seen that look on his face since Gat died. I think... I think we'd better leave him alone for a while."

"Pierce, we can't-" Shaundi bit her tongue. "We can't just let this go." She briefly eyed Kinzie and Matt before turning away from them and lowering her voice. "It's obviously been going on for a long time. We need to _talk_ to him."

"You saw the mood he's in," Pierce said. "Give him some time, Shaundi. If and when he wants to talk, well..."

"You'll hear about it!" Santiago's voice abruptly boomed from the lower deck, right up through the metal floor. "Now would you all kindly shut the fuck up about me while I'm not there? Or at least _lower your goddamn voices?_"

The shocked silence that followed was broken by a muffled _clang_, a yelp of pain, and a stream of virulent curses, decreasing in volume; and then by Matt's polite cough and the resumed clicking of Kinzie's keyboard.

Pierce folded his hands under his shoulders with his thumbs sticking up and carefully avoided Shaundi's gaze, eyebrows riding high. He seemed to be fighting a smirk.

Shaundi felt like slapping him. Why couldn't he take this seriously? Santiago wasn't just their boss, he was their _friend_. Friends talked to each other about serious issues. What good did drawing it out do anybody? Waiting might have sat well with Shaundi many years ago, but no longer. Not when someone she cared about was clearly in pain.

Her train of thought came to a gradual halt as she sat, fuming, next to an unused console. She had known Santiago for over a decade, called him her best friend for most of it, and during that time he had shared many private facets of himself with her. Never this.

He'd exposed himself to her, allowed her access to his deepest vulnerabilities – or so she had believed. Why keep his self-injury from her? Why work so hard to maintain the secret, to never to be seen wearing anything that might reveal his scars?

Unbidden, words she'd spoken to Pierce in the simulation earlier rose to the front of her mind. _A complete absence of shame._ And suddenly she understood why Santiago might have hidden this one part of himself from her, despite taking her into his confidence about so many other personal demons.

A virus that nullified shame, but only as long as it lasted. If she could have, Shaundi would have gone into the simulation and resurrected Tanya just so she could kill her all over again, slowly.

Loathe though she was to admit it, Pierce was probably right. She felt a hand on her shoulder and looked up to see him, her other best friend, watching her with silent understanding. Shaundi sighed and reached up to rest her hand on his.


End file.
